Shabbat Shalom! As some of you may know,
I was away last weekend to participate in a workshop on the Intersections of
Antisemitism and Racism. It was a heavy weekend with many ideas brought in and
a lot of time spent on unpacking internalized antisemitism. We shared a lot
about all the ways that antisemitism has shaped our lives and upbringings. We
started off with a brief overview of antisemitism and how it works: a system of
ideas based on White Supremacy and Christian hegemony that are passed down
through institutions to enable scapegoating of Jews. It is fundamentally
different from racism in this respect. Whereas most racism functions on lies of
the inferiority of the marginalized people, antisemitism functions on lies of
superiority of Jews, and puts us in positions of buffer between the real ruling
class and the other marginalized people, so that we can be more easily
scapegoated when the ruling class deems it necessary. It functions on our
isolation, especially in separating us from other marginalized communities, and
leading us to believe that we can only ever count on ourselves, while leading
other marginalized folks to believe that we are the source of their
exploitation. It is cyclical, allowing Jews to succeed in good times, so that they
will be an easy target in bad times.
Most of this was not new to me, though it
felt validating to hear it from facilitators of this workshop and to sit in a
room of people who see this reality and are committed to fighting it. After
this background session, though, we moved on to “Facing the Unfaceable:” how
antisemitism has affected us personally. We teased out all the Jewish
stereotypes and neuroses and the ways in which so many of us have lived those
stereotypes as coping mechanisms against the anxiety of antisemitism. This is
when we started to unpack our internalized antisemitism. We practiced saying,
“I hate what antisemitism has done to my beloved people!” and then naming a
thing that we hate that has been caused by antisemitism. The facilitators
called this and the other coping mechanisms we discussed, “Ancestrally
designated best practices for our survival.” At this point, one of the
facilitators said (paraphrasing because I can’t remember the exact wording),
“Jews are human, just like all other humans. This means our grief and trauma
connects us to the grief and trauma of all other people. This is important
because antisemitism causes us to believe that we are a mutant people.”
This struck me hard. I walk around with
both of those pieces and never realized it before. I assert to my fellow Jews
all the time that we need to be involved in liberation politics because our
grief and our trauma connects us to the grief and trauma of other people. I
come into Jewish spaces assuming that our shared culturally inherited trauma
and our shared values of Tikkun Olam means everyone is already on the same page
as me, equally committed to ending state violence against other peoples,
equally committed to intersectional liberation. But I don’t enter liberation movements
with the same expectation and assumption that everyone is equally committed to
ending antisemitism. And that is my internalized antisemitism. That is me
accepting the narrative that we have no allies, that we shouldn’t even try to
get other folks on our team. That the only way to break out of the buffer space
that White Supremacy places us in is to show up purely as allies to other
people that White Supremacy exploits, rather than to advocate for our own
unique freedom from the ways in which White Supremacy exploits us. And that’s
not good Jewish leadership. We’re a little over a week past Yom Kippur, but I
realized during this conference last week, that I still have some more teshuvah
to do for the Jewish people. For the sin I have committed against you by
holding the people I love most against a higher standard than I hold for other
people. For the sin I have committed against other peoples by assuming they can’t
stand up to that standard.
We are now in the midst of Sukkot. Our
sukkah reminds us of the fragility of life, and the miraculous strength and
abundance of spirit. We can be vulnerable to antisemitism and but we can also
be strong advocates for ourselves and our communities. In the Festival Torah
reading for today, from Exodus, Moses demands that God show him Godself. He is
concerned that God will abandon him to lead the people on his own without knowing
what exactly they are getting into, and so he wants to see God’s leadership
straight on. God, of course, cannot show God’s full self to a mortal, but
allows the Divine Goodness to pass by Moses and Moses is able to get a fleeting
glimpse of that Goodness. This is God reassuring Moses that God will lead and
Moses can follow God’s trail, never quite seeing what’s ahead or God’s whole
glory, but feeling certain that he is following the right path. The people of
Israel dwelt in Sukkot throughout their desert wanderings, vulnerable to
weather and war, but certain of God’s presences among them. We now often live
the opposite way: in secure homes and seemingly safe from oppressive forces but
vulnerable to theological doubts and existential dread. I want to hold both of
these truths for our people. I pray that this time in which we put ourselves
into slightly more vulnerable positions in our temporary dwelling places will
help us see God’s presence in ourselves and strengthen our spirits so that we
may all learn to be better self-advocates. May this festival season be one of
community building and love, safety and strength, and may we be certain the
holiness dwells among us. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.
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